Peter Stolypin

Peter Stolypin was a remarkable man. All
the evidence seems to point to a catastrophe within Russia at some point in the
early C20th. Yet Peter Stolypin was the one man who is most associated with
having the ability to save the Romanov's. His assassination in 1911 probably
doomed the Romanov's to history.

The seeming promises of Witte had
infuriated the advisors of Nicholas II. He was dismissed from office and
replaced by the elderly Gremykim. His Minister of Finance was Kokovtsev and his
Minister of the Interior was Peter Stolypin.

Stolypin was the son of a provincial
officer in Saratov. Stolypin rose to be provincial governor in 1905. He gained a
reputation as the only governor who was able to keep a firm hold on his
province. Stolypin was the first governor to use effective police methods
against those who might be suspected of causing trouble. It is said that he had
a police record on every adult male in his province. Stolypin also ensured that
his police force was totally loyal. The only criteria for promotion was
effectiveness. While you were in Stolypin’s police force, you were safe. This
bound you to the police. Any hint that a police officer was involved in
corruption was met with dismissal. This took away from you the protection that
the police offered – and Stolypin’s police force had many enemies.

On of Stolypin’s great strengths as a
politician was his ability to wait and observe rather than make an immediate
decision. This served him well at the meeting of the First
Duma. The reform
programme of the Duma had been rejected by the government as inadmissible. This
provoked great anger in the Duma and many took to the floor to criticise the
government. Ministers responded by simply not listening to their calls – all
except Stolypin. He listened to what was said – not because he agreed with all
of it, but because it identified to him who Russia’s enemies were. It also
showed him who were the more moderate – people whom he could probably work
with in implementing the reforms he had in mind for Russia.

Stolypin believed that the peasants were
natural conservatives at heart. He planned to introduce reforms that would
harness this conservatism and bring them on to the side of the government. In
short, he wanted to foist onto them a bourgeois mentality by moving them away
from their communal responsibilities and substituting this for individual
responsibilities. Stolypin wanted to introduce a freehold system of land tenure.
Stolypin believed that the peasants would thank the government for this
improvement in their lifestyle and scupper any chance there might have been of
the workers in the cities joining ranks with the peasants in the countryside.

What Stolypin planned was nothing less
than a major revolution in the countryside. Logic was on his side – the
peasants were by nature conservative. Also by giving them the ownership of the
land they worked, he would have been making them property owners. Such an
elevation in their status would bring, so Stolypin believed, major support to
the government and take away any semblance of support for what the Duma wanted.
This, in turn, would strengthen autocracy in Russia – as the tsar would have
the support of the majority of peasants and the power of the Duma would have
been nullified. This is what Stolypin hoped for. However, he faced one huge
problem – convincing others in the government that handing over land to the
peasants was the way ahead.

Some historians believe that if Stolypin
had been able to introduce his land reforms and the peasants had ownership of
their land, a large part of the anger that was building up against the
government would have been dissipated. Other historians have argued that such
reforms would have propelled Russia towards a revolution regardless, as the
peasants would have wanted more, while the workers would have wanted some form
of reform for themselves. This is all speculation as Stolypin’s assassination
meant that his land reforms were never introduced.

Stolypin’s time in government was a curious mix
of desired for reform mixed with ardent repression of any unrest and Russification.